Rent Champion (1949)

Boxing noir. - Champion review by Steve

The same year as Robert Wise's The Set-Up, his old associate at RKO, Mark Robson, also made a boxing picture which operates as a scathing critique of American individualism. This is about how much humanity a poor man must divest in order to succeed; the sociopathic exploitation of others it takes for him to achieve personal wealth and status.

It is a dystopic analysis of the mythology of the American dream. In the role that made him a star , Kirk Douglas plays a penniless nobody who lives with the indignity of poverty. When at absolute rock bottom, he is taken on by Paul Stewart's cynical boxing manager. In his quest to become champion, the contender betrays everyone he encounters.

The excellent support cast is led by Arthur Kennedy as the boxer's brother who has a manifest physical injury where the fighter has a hidden moral affliction. Kennedy loses out painfully to Douglas' unrestrained egotism. He is extremely affecting in the noirish shadows of this moral tale.

The boxing scenes are superb. It won an Oscar for the ringside editing and Franz Planer's photography is as gorgeous as ever. But it mainly scores as a vehicle for Douglas who is exceptional in a physical role unusual for melodrama in that period. His implicit and explicit aura of violent threat is very potent.